Resistance: Fall of Man

If you're going to make a first-person shooter, you might as well take aim to deliver the best of what this style of gaming has to offer. That's what Ratchet & Clank developer Insomniac Games must have done with Resistance: Fall of Man. One of the most highly anticipated titles in the PlayStation 3 launch lineup, Resistance is a technically impressive, well-designed, intense action game that unmistakably draws inspiration from some of the finest recent examples of similar games.

Resistance doesn't attempt anything wildly different than other first-person shooters out there, but by offering a strong selection of interesting weapons, plenty of ruthless foes to shoot them at, good level design, and an excellent presentation, it accomplishes what most such games fail to do. A fully featured multiplayer mode for up to 40 players rounds out an exciting campaign in what's an all-around great effort and a promising example of what the PlayStation 3 can do.

Resistance takes place in a grim alternate reality in which World War II never happened, yet something possibly even worse happened instead. As political tensions run high in the middle of the 20th century, a monstrous race of horrifying creatures suddenly shows up and starts killing everyone. Initially presumed to be a Russian biological weapon, this fiendish species is known as the Chimera. It quickly overwhelms Asia and most of Europe before it focuses attention on the United Kingdom. In the game, you play as a no-nonsense American soldier named Nathan Hale, who is sent in to reinforce the UK's defenses.

A brush with death early on gives Hale a unique perspective of his foe and, before long, he's lone-wolfing it against the worst that the Chimera has to offer. As Hale, you'll blast your way through the devastated streets of England and also find yourself deep within the enemy's own territory as you struggle to survive and turn the tide of a losing battle.

The story is told from the perspective of a different officer who briefly interacts with Hale during his missions against a seemingly unstoppable enemy. Her solemn narration is easy enough to follow but not particularly engaging because by her own admission, she doesn't really know what's going on in Hale's head or what's going on with the Chimera. Brief but nicely done cinematic cutscenes using the game's 3D engine at least serve to give Nathan Hale a believably concerned look between battles. Still black-and-white images and charts that are made to look as if they could have come from the early '50s also help set the mood and premise of each level in the game's more than 10 main stages.

However, the story in Resistance is there mostly to justify a number of fairly conventional, though very well done, first-person shooter battles. You'll learn a bit about the Chimera as you fight, and there's some resolution once you finally finish the campaign after countless grueling shoot-outs. But Hale's character is never developed and he almost never speaks, and the plot has some noticeable gaps. Ultimately, this is a game whose personality mostly comes across when you're shooting something. The Chimera and their ugly spider-like features make them easy to hate straightaway.

Resistance controls just like other first-person shooters on consoles. You use the two analog sticks to move and aim, while the left and right shoulder buttons trigger your weapon's primary and alternate firing modes. The game takes a few small liberties with certain conventions, but none that will substantially change how you'll play it if you're used to playing similar stuff. Some of these tweaks to the formula have to do with how you recover your health between shoot-outs. In Resistance's campaign, your health bar is divided up into four quadrants, which automatically recharges up to the nearest quadrant if you avoid getting hit for a little while.

This isn't quite like what's become trendy because of games such as the sequels to Halo or Call of Duty, in which your health recharges completely between firefights. Here, when your health is low, you can still survive the typical encounter but you'll really need to be on your guard. Also, unlike in those games, Resistance lets you pick up and carry each new weapon you find, which may not seem as realistic as having room for only a few guns, but it means you get an increasingly powerful, all-purpose arsenal at your disposal.

The game transparently saves your progress as you fight through the campaign and uses a checkpoint system in mid-mission. Checkpoints can be fairly sparse at times, creating tension and the need to replay some tough battles repeatedly. But because the combat is dynamic and exciting, having to do this usually isn't a bad thing. However, the game does get almost punishingly hard near the end at the default difficulty setting, forcing a little too much trial and error. There's an easier and a harder difficulty setting as well.